To Our Readers:

With our first anniversary a month away, we decided to pause briefly to reflect on what our readers have found most interesting about the emerging technology and culture of virtual worlds. We’ve included our top 10 articles of 2007 as ranked by Google Analytics.

Immersion in Second Life was our primary focus the early part of 2007, with forays into Kaneva, There.com, IMVU, and HiPiHi during the later part—while maintaining a home base and virtual offices in Second Life. As in real life, we were able to attend lectures, presentations and music venues; visit art galleries, castles, shopping malls, minicities and micronations from various eras; and perhaps most importantly, IM and chat with friends and acquaintances from all over the world—all from the comfort of an easy chair and a desktop or laptop computer. Such is the reality of the technology today.

We consider ourselves privileged to weave graphical stories about the creative artists, engineers, business people, academics, and other pioneers who are laying the foundations for the emerging metaverse. One of these pioneers, avatar John Zhaoying (John Jainschigg of CMP Technology and Dr. Dobb’s), graces the cover of this issue as “Avatar of the Year” for his work creating a forum for virtual world developers.

John’s work in 2007 brought together top executives, developers, managers, artists, and business people from small independent startups to the likes of IBM, Sun Microsystems, MIT, Cisco, Intel, and Duke University—along with Second Life luminaries CEO Philip Rosedale and Chairman of the Board Mitch Kapor. These “Life 2.0” summits, like Nick Wilson’s Metanomics series with Cornell University’s Robert Bloomfield, are defining the vision of what the metaverse currently is—and might become—in the near future.

If we are to believe Moore’s law, it’s not impossible to imagine the higher bandwidth, faster GPUs, sophisticated software, and new wearable computing clothing and lenses (to go along with the ubiquitous white iPod earbuds) where a virtual person might actually sit down next to you in your living room, a university classroom, or at a local Starbucks. Or, where your avatar might visit the actual Amazon jungle, the Taj Mahal (real or virtual), or a simulation of Jupiter—you pick. Such is the promise of the technology in the coming decades.

Surfdaddy Orca
Editor in Chief